1. Bluehost (www.Bluehost.com)

Bluehost is one of the popular hosting services along small business owners and bloggers. Hence the reason, I’m recommending Bluehost for people who want to create their website using WordPress.

They’re hosting more than 2 million websites and they also part of EIG who also own HostGator.

How did Bluehost compare? Turns out quite good:

Their last 12-month average uptime is >99.99% and load time 419ms. Surely a strong top 1 host.

BlueHost has 24/7 customer service available for any questions you may have regarding website setup. They’re not cheap, though. Prices start at $2.75 per month, but they throw in a free domain name plus site migration for new accounts, too.

2. HostGator Cloud (www.HostGator.com)

HostGator was founded back in 2003 by Brent Oxley and later sold to Endurance International Group (EIG).

According to their website, they host more than 10 million domains making them one of the most popular web hosting providers on the planet (next to GoDaddy).

And for a reason.

Their last 10-month average load time is 462ms and uptime 99.96%. This means they’re the most reliable web hosting with only 1 hour of downtime per year. Plus, they were the third fastest web hosting, only beaten by A2 Hosting (which avg. uptime is lower).

To give you a better overview of HostGator Cloud performance, take a look at the graph below (last 10 months):

Keep in mind that this isn’t the regular, HostGator shared hosting option. It’s the new and improved cloud hosting. They come with a pricey cost – $13.99/mo, but they’re currently discounted to $2.99/mo

PROS: Good load time, reliable, one-click install for WordPress, 1 free site transfer

4. InMotion Hosting (InMotionHosting.com)

InMotion hosting was founded in 2001 and is privately held hosting provider, with a customer base of over 300,000 domains.

They also own a hosting website named “Web Hosting Hub”.

They advertise themselves as “best web hosting for business” and they’re pricing starts from $5.99, but I found a discount at a cheap price. But first, let’s see how InMotion hosting performs:

InMotion delivered average uptime of 99.97% over the last three months. That’s pretty strong and consistent.

Keep in mind that the average speed in the hosting industry is about 890ms, and InMotion Hosting I average page loading time is slightly below it – 752ms. So it may not be as fast as HostGator or A2 Hosting, but still good enough to beat the hosting industry average.

One of the drawbacks with InMotion Hosting is that there’s no instant account access. That means if you’re an international customer, outside the North America for example, there might be a delay and hassle when attempting to verify your new account.

5. A2 Hosting (www.A2Hosting.com)

A2 Hosting is quite new in the WordPress hosting niche (founded in 2001), but only lately become more popular.

They claim to be 20x faster than their competitors. Somehow, they managed to achieve faster load time than SiteGround or HostGator.

They averaged 475ms in a period of 3 months. That is basically instant page loading, making impatient people happy because they won’t have to wait for pages to load. A2 Hosting implements caching, which stores data in a visitor’s browser, so they won’t have to request information from your website every time someone tries to access it.

Unfortunately, their uptime has slipped over the past few months to an average of 99.90% (currently 2 hours of downtime over a period of 3 months).

A2 offers 24/7 customer support through their live chat, email, phone, and ticketing systems. I checked this out by contacting their live support and they responded instantly with easy-to-understand responses.

6. iPage (www.iPage.com)

iPage was started in 1998 and has since grown to serve over one million websites. They’re owned by the Endurance International Group (EIG) brand, and with a big company comes some misleading advertisements and disappointing facts.

I gave iPage Hosting a chance since they, too, call themselves as WordPress hosting. Luckily, form HostingFacts.com I was able to get access to their last 3-month uptime and speed data.

During this time they’ve managed to deliver 99.98% uptime.

The average loading time is 868ms. It’s not bad, but it’s well below the competition’s average.

iPage is cheap, though. They’re one of the cheapest hosting options I saw (behind one other hosting option) at $1.99 a month. This is the rate for 12-36 months, so you would technically be locked into a super long term deal to get that price. And, as you can see, you get what you pay for with speed and performance.

iPage is probably not the best option in hosting WordPress. Although the customer support and prices are nice, you don’t want to struggle with their slow speed and average uptime.

7. GreenGeeks (www.GreenGeeks.com)

GreenGeeks, founded in 2006 by Trey Gardner now hosts over 300,000+ websites over their nine years in business.

They are the only “truly” green host in this list. They claim 99.9% uptime on their website. That’s almost zero downtime. And it’s a bold claim to make. Can they live up to the hype?

When tested their performance, GreenGeeks delivered 99.92% uptime. So 0.02% above their promise. Not bad.

That equates to only 3 hours of downtime (not as good as SiteGround or HostGator Cloud, though).

Fortunately, GreenGeeks did show the same great results in speed as they did in uptime.

Their average loading time was 567ms – this is 36% than the industry average.

GreenGeeks has 24/7/365 U.S. based support via live chat, phone, or email support. Some of their other features are free data transfers, free domain name, and free site migration.

GreenGeeks goes for $3.95 per month and they offer a 30-day money back guarantee. Each pricing plan is all-inclusive too. Although GreenGeeks has excellent uptime, their speed is slow. Which is kinda a deal breaker. I suggest you look at some of the better hosting options reviewed (like #1 and #2 above) that go for around the same price.

8. Site5 Hosting (www.Site5.com)

Site5, founded in 1999 by Matt Lightner (and later sold to EIG) promises best web hosting for serious web designers.

After testing them for 3 months, Site5 delivered below average site load time of 743ms:

Their uptime isn’t anything spectacular. In fact, similarly to iPage, their avg. uptime over a period of 8 months is 99.97%.

They do provide good support through live chat, email, and phone support in case you have questions, along with a 90-day money back guarantee if you’d like to try them out anyway.

Site5 offers 3 pricing plans. The first, “hostBasic” is $6.95 per month, which allows you to have one website and free migrations. The second plan, “hostPro+Turbo” is $11.95 per month, which offers 24/7 live chat support, free migrations, and a free dedicated IP. The last plan, “hostPro” is $8.95 offers unlimited websites and free migrations.

Their page loading times came in at an average of 849ms over the same period. Not so good, huh.

Since they got DDOS attack they uptime is obviously very low – 99.90%. DreamHost also throws in a few other nice little add-ons.

First, you get unlimited bandwidth. They’ll credit your account for every hour that there was an issue with uptime. And when I contacted customer support to ask a couple of questions, I got a fairly quick response.

One of DreamHost’s big drawbacks is their pricing. Their lowest plan is still almost double some other hosting sites at $7.95 per month. On the plus side, however, you get the longest money back guarantee from DreamHost (97-days) to test drive their service before getting locked into a lengthy contract.

10. Arvixe (www.Arvixe.com)

Arvixe was originally founded in 2003 before later being acquired by EIG (again!).

Things aren’t starting great with their 99.60% uptime.

Take a close look at their average speed on the test WordPress site (hostingfacts-arv.com):

The industry average for speed is around 890ms. That’s not even very fast to be honest, as some of the fastest hosting providers load within ~400ms (or almost twice as fast).

How did Arvixe perform? An abysmal 5,702ms. That is unbelievably slow. Nearly impossibly slow. Just one second delay in page load time could cost Amazon 1.6 billion. Think what it can do to your online business.

Seems like Arvixe is just slow period. Because that’s what customer support was too. I tried reaching out to ask a few basic questions and it took over an hour for a response.

Arvixe’s pricing is also on the expensive side of the fence at $7 a month. Upfront and in advance for a full two years. Any shorter plans means paying much more per month. Arvixe does offer unlimited bandwidth and a free domain name for life to their credit.

But you can do so much better than Arvixe. Once again, take a look at the first few names in this review to for companies that exceed across the board in uptime, page loading times, customer support, and price.

Best WordPress Hosting? Quick Recap

There you have it.

A detailed, no-BS review of the top ten WordPress hosting providers (with the help of HostingFacts.com).

Each review was based on actual data and experience (not just stealing the words directly from their website). Third-party sources, like Pingdom, were used to monitor and analyze performance. So you know the data is legitimate.

In short, I recommend using a web hosting provider that provides decent uptime 99.95% and up, while keep their load time less than 650ms.

In my in-depth WordPress hosting review, I came to a conclusion that you can’t go wrong with HostGator Cloud, SiteGround or Bluehost. They all offer strong uptime, fast page loading times, great customer support, and unbeatably low prices.